Tracking and visualization are very important and useful for representing and analyzing data. Financial data and tracking dividends are not the exception in this case. Our portfolio stats give us immediate answers to the following questions:
- How is invested capital divided among industries?
- How are our equities distributed per industry?
- In how many industries have we invested?
- What is the equity relative position in the industry?
Company industry
Company sector and industry can be found on Yahoo Finance in the company profile.
What are the major stats we want to visualize in our dividends portfolio?
- The equity’s relative position in portfolio
- The industry’s relative position in portfolio
- Number of shares per equity
- Our yield and current yield
- Annual dividends
- Whether equity is enrolled for DRIP
Current capital gain/loss information is another stat that we want to be aware of despite the fact that it does not have an immediate effect on our positions. We realize that at some point there may be a loss in our portfolio because of overall market fluctuation. Equity indicators that are more important for us are described in dividend-paying companies.
Since not all of these stats are available on our Web broker, TD Waterhouse, we manage them in a Google Spreadsheet. The following spreadsheet helps us to see the big picture and portfolio distribution among industries.
Because we cannot predict the future, diversification is important in investing. Some of the companies performing better than others depending on economical cycles. Dividends paying companies is one of our passive income streams and we strive to keep it diversified. Recently we have added two new income streams to our portfolio.
At the time of writing this post, we have relatively big positions in the financial, utility and energy sectors. We would like to have better positions in other sectors, such as restaurants (food), railroads (services).
For us tracking received dividends involve two-phase process. The first part is an expectation; we summarize in a Google Spreadsheet the expected monthly dividends for the coming year. The second phase involves verifying received dividends and comparing to our expectations. Sometimes, a missed dividend hike may come in surprise while checking received dividends.
We have a Google spreadsheet that summarizes the dividend payment days to allow us to check dividend receiving. I will post received dividend monthly updates that link to our Google spreadsheet.
